Brown's Daily Word 2-7-14

    It is going to be a very bright and brilliant day.  Those of you live in the area join us for our weekly television outreach this evening at 7 PM on Time Warner Cable Channel 4.  We are getting ready for our fabulous February banquet that will be held tomorrow at 5 PM at our Fellowship Hall of the Union Center UMC.  The Fellowshp Hall is being transformed in to a banquet Hall.  Our young chef Danny  is preparing a very special banquet.  There will be an amazing concert led by our Aric Phinney, an accomplished musician, and other Christian artists.  We are excited and blessed.  Thank you Jesus.  We will meet for Sunday worship and celebration at 8:30 and 11:00 AM at the Union Center UMC and at 9:30 AM at the Wesley UMC.  Plan to attend the worship of the Lord with His people wherever you might be this weekend.  The Lord will be praised, you will be blessed, and Satan will be tormented.  Praise the Lord!

    I have a book in my library given to me by our daughter Sunita. It is entitled, "The Hole in the Gospel", written by.Richard Stearns, the president of World Vision.  In this book he tells a remarkable story about a woman named Margaret Achero. Margaret was caught in the incredible fighting in northern Uganda, fighting that was propagated by the "Lord's Resistance Army".  One day, Margaret, who was six months pregnant, was out in her garden working with several women from her village, when out of the bush appeared a small battalion that had entered their village.  The group of soldiers was really a group of children led by an adult commander.  It's common in some parts of Africa for children to be snatched away from their families to be brainwashed to commit unbelievable atrocities against other people.

    So Margaret and her friends found themselves face to face with this band of soldiers.  The soldiers had come to the village to look for food and supplies, and as they weren't satisfied with what they received, they began to unleash a massacre on Margaret's friends.  The child soldiers were killing these women with their machetes.  When they turned toward Margaret, the commander told them to stop. He felt it would be bad luck on the troops to kill a pregnant woman.  So instead, he gave a command for the children to cut off Margaret's nose, ears, and lips.  They did, and then they left her in the field to die, so the blood wouldn't be on their hands.

    But Margaret was rescued.  She was taken to a hospital where she went through multiple operations and was then taken to a rehab center headed up by World Vision.  The World Vision counselors began to deal with not just the physical trauma but the emotional, spiritual, and relational trauma that Margaret had undergone that day in the field.  Her heart began to heal.  She spent the next several months at the clinic and gave birth to a little boy whom she named James.

    Imagine Margaret's horror when one day at the rehab center—this place of safety—a group of counselors walked into the center courtyard with the commander of the group that had committed the atrocities against Margaret and her friends.  This commander had been captured and brought to the same place. The counselors didn't realize the connection between him and Margaret; they were only hoping to offer him spiritual counseling to turn his life around.  Imagine the extreme emotions that Margaret must have felt when she saw this man!  The anxiety, the anger, the fear, the horror, and the revenge.  There must have been a desire in her to run away as far as she could, and at the same time, a desire to take him out.

    Stearns says that what happened next can only be understood through the miracle of God's love, as a demonstration of the incredible power of the gospel to redeem even the darkest kinds of people.  Counselors began to work with the commander.  At first he denied any atrocities that he had committed during the war, but eventually his heart began to soften.  The counselors also worked with Margaret, reminding her of the spiritual foundations she had from early childhood. Then, several months into all of this, a meeting was planned between Margaret and this commander from the LRA.

    Through tears and humility, the commander bowed his head and begged for Margaret to forgive him for what he had done.  Margaret supernaturally found the means and will to do it.  There is a picture that hangs in the rehab center now of the LRA commander sitting in the compound holding baby James.  Standing right behind him is Margaret Achero, smiling without lips.  What a story.  What a demonstration of the incredible power of the gospel to redeem even the darkest evil."

    ^"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us". Romans 5:8   KJV

    ^"    Christ arrives right on time to make this happen.  He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready.  He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready.  And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway.  We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice.  But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him."   Romans 5:6-8 The Message

  In Christ,
   Brown
http://youtu.be/ldu-SenKDks

Brown's Daily Word 2-5-14

    Praise the Lord.  He is upon the throne.  He is in control.  It has been snowing much of the later part of the night.  Most of the schools around central New York are closed.  A winter weather warning has been posted for throughout the day today.  We will not meet for our Wednesday Evening gathering today.  It has been an unusual winter.  The Lord is doing and demonstrating something new around the globe and around the corner.  He reminds us, "Be still and know that I am God".   

    The God of the Bible is not the God of the status quo. First he shakes us up, and then he uses us to shake our world.  That’s always been God’s method.  When God wanted to change the world, he told Noah to do something he had never done before (build an ark) to prepare for something he had never seen before (rain). When God wanted to bring forth a great nation, he called a successful, middle-aged businessman named Abram and told him to leave Ur of the Chaldees.  When God wanted to deliver his people, he found a man slow of speech named Moses and sent him to talk to the Pharaoh.  When the Lord needed someone to hide the spies in Jericho, he found a prostitute named Rahab.  When God needed someone to defeat Goliath, he chose a shepherd boy named David.  What God wanted to deliver his people from destruction, he chose a young girl named Esther.  When Christ wanted some men in his inner circle, he chose fisherman and tax collectors, a loud mouth named Peter and two brothers called the “sons of thunder,” and told them to drop everything and follow him.  In other words, the Lord God we worship and serve is not a God of the Status Quo.

    . . . And so the Father sent his Son into the world.  He came unto his own and his own received him not.  In him was light, and the light was the life of men.  In him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.  For God so loved the world that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.  Our Lord did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.  And here is the truth.  Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.  But God demonstrates his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  He has made him who knew no sin to become sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.  And he has brought you to life who were dead in your trespasses and sins.  For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, lest any man should boast.  Having made us new creations in Christ, he has appointed us as ministers of reconciliation that we might say to the world, “Be reconciled to God.”  And he said to us, “As the Father has sent me, so send I you.”  Then he gave us his standing orders.  Go into all the world and make disciples of every nation.  This is the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ.

    Our God is not the God of the status quo.  First he shakes us up, and then he uses us to shake the world.  In Christ, Brown 

http://youtu.be/6_KXsMCJgBQ

Praise the Lord for 2014.  It is going to be an exciting year for ministry and the mission of Jesus Christ, our Lord.  May Jesus our Lord bless us as we find the ways and means to celebrate His grace and love.  We are planning for an evening of great celebration on Saturday, February 8.  It will be held at 5 PM at the Fellowship Hall, Union Center United Methodist Church, 128 Maple Drive.

   Our own chef Danny Snyder will be preparing a very special banquet.  This will be prepared and served with much love.  Our own Aric Phinney, a gifted and talented musician, will be ministering to us in music.  There will be a time of testimonies and praises.  Please join us.

  

Come, Share , Rejoice

   See you then and there.

         Brown

Brown's Daily Word 2-3-14

Good morning and praise the Lord.  For our friends around the globe, the famous and historic Super Bowl between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks was played here in America the Beautiful.  It is an historic occasion.  The national anthem was sung by Renee Fleming, who often sings in Handel's Messiah.  Her rendition of the National Anthem was outstanding and superb.  The underdog Seahawks trounced the usually formidable Broncos.   Yesterday, an outstanding Oscar winning actor was found dead.. dying a tragic death.   The formidable  and almost unbeatable football team was trounced. 

    I am reflecting that we are all  earthen vessels...  Often the Godless culture thinks that we humans are made of steel, but in 2 Corinthians 4, Paul began verse 7 by claiming, "we have this treasure in jars of clay."  Instead of "jars of clay," some translations read "clay pots" or "earthenware vessels."  When I was growing up in India we used pottery for common household use.  Clay pottery was the most common material for cookware, dishes, washbasins, and storage in the first century.  Clay pots kept liquid cool and slowed the evaporation process.  Clay was easy to obtain and work with.  If a pot broke, you could make or buy another cheaply and easily.  Sometimes people stored their valuables in jars of clay, assuming that nobody would think of looking in something so ordinary to find anything of value.  If you've ever stuck cash in a sock drawer, you get the idea.

    In reality we Christians like jars of clay.  First of all, clay pots were very ordinary, in common usage everywhere, especially in the homes of peasants and common people.  Wealthy people used more exotic materials, such as ivory, marble, glass, or fine wood, but regular people used clay pots.  I suppose it would be like saying today, "we have this treasure in baggies."  Second, jars of clay were fragile. Compared to marble, ivory, or even wood, clay didn't last.  Since it was so cheap, no one really expected it to.  People used a pot for a while, and when it got too chipped or cracked to use, or when it fell and shattered, they simply got another one.

    Paul created a great juxtaposition of ideas.  God has taken this great treasure, the life of Christ, and placed it in people like you and me, who are as common and fragile as clay pots.  God stores his treasure in fragile containers—like us—to display his life-giving power.  That way, it is clear that whatever we accomplish is done only by God's power.  Paul was often on the receiving end of criticism, slander, rejection, and persecution, yet somehow the gospel was spread through him so that the church was established throughout the known world.  The only explanation was that God must have been working through him!

    It is written "We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed... We're perplexed, but not in despair."  We are reminded that the Lord never promised us immunity from the hurts and hardships of life.  If anything, following Christ makes things more complicated and leaves us more vulnerable to hostility and heartache. The most obvious evidence of the presence of God in our lives isn't that we escape hardship, but that we overcome hardship.  If we are feeling hard pressed, perplexed, picked on, or knocked down, it doesn't necessarily mean that we are doing something wrong.  On the contrary, it probably means we are right where we are supposed to be.  God doesn't take pleasure in our hardship, nor does he afflict us with pain simply to see how we will handle it.  However, it is true that every time we get knocked around without breaking, we show the world we have something special inside us—the life of Christ.  As long as that's true, we're unbreakable.

In Christ,

 Brown

http://youtu.be/JYDcBfQEa64